Sitaare Zameen Par, Bhool Chuk Maaf Help PVR Inox Garner More Audience In Q1

Aamir Khan-starrer 'Sitaare Zameen Par' and Rajkumar Rao's Bhool Chuk Maaf has helped PVR Inox garner more audience in first quarter of fiscal 2025-26, said Sanjeev Bijli, Executive Director at PVR Inox Ltd.

"We are very happy with the results, as despite IPL people came to watch films," Bijli told NDTV Profit. "The same quarter last year was a bit underwhelming due to elections, IPL and writers strike in Bollywood," he added.

"We knew that there were some great films coming up this quarter, including the big Bollywood films that had seen a hiatus for the last couple of years," he added.

Bijli highlighted that mid-budget Hindi films turned out to be sleeper hits has helped PVR Inox. "Hindi mid-budget films like Jatt, Sitaare Zameen Par, and Bhool Chuk Maaf, were sleeper hits. We did not expect it them to be as big as they did," he said.

Aamir Khan-starrer 'Sitaare Zameen Par' has collected over Rs 100 crore at the domestic box office, while Rajkumar Rao's Bhool Chuk Maaf had crossed over Rs 50 crore net at the domestic box office.

Bijli noted that a combination of English, Regional and Hindi films, played a major role to boost earnings this quarter. "Summer vacation also really helped us garner more customers this quarter. We have got 34 million people this quarter and higher ATP which went up by 10% and a higher spend per person," he added.

On re-releases of old Hindi films Bijli noted that PVR Inox will keep doing re-releases. "We are slotting re-releases of old films depending upon the gaps in programming. We started this re-release programme with Rockstar, Sanam Teri Kasam, Laila Majnu—which became colossal hits. But, as per our admissions, they are still very small as they are contributing to about 5-7% of total admissions right now," he said.

Bijli supported Aamir Khan's decision of releasing Sitaare Zameen Par at the theatres, skipping OTT. Khan chose to sidestep the OTT path for his latest film Sitaare Zameen Par, opting instead for YouTube's pay per view model. "It was an amazing step taken by Amir Khan to support the theatrical business, that we all wanted," he said.

Bijli highlighted that box office numbers sends a benchmark for the films to monetise for all other platforms available.

Bijli further highlighted that amongst the 100 odd screens that PVR is set to open this financial year, about 50-60% are a combination of two new formats—one is asset light and foco model.